Lesson Plans for CommunityWalks
Personal Learning Maps - Entry Points Introduce yourself by telling a story about a place near your school. Put this story in a marker on a map that is being shared by other students in the Personal Learning Space or Youth Voices. Make links from your marker to your profile page and from your profile back to your marker on Entry Points map. Later you can add photographs, sound, and video! Essential Questions * What places in your community are special to you? * What stories can you tell about these places? * Would these stories be what people expect someone from your community to write? Or would they be surprised? * How will reading your story and knowing about your special place help a young person at another school relate to your life and get to know you? Notes * To add your school to the categories, please contact Paul Allison at allisonpr@gmail.com * Please add your City, State, and Country (and only these three locations) in the markers. Add a marker with a story on the Entry Points map, then link to and from your profile page #'Freewrite about a place, then edit.' #*Do some freewriting that answers some of the questions above. #*Put an address at the top or your screen, then write non-stop for 10 or 15 minutes. #*Keep in mind that you are introducing your community and yourself to people who have probably never been to your city or town. #*Spell check, grammar check. Make it as good as you possibly can. It's going out the world! #'Join the Mapping Community. Register and Confirm for CommunityWalk Maps.' #*Find and join the Mapping Community -- either in Youth Voices: Mapping or in Personal Learning Space: Mapping, and follow the directions there. #*Click on the link for Entry Points map. #**Once in the map click "Sign Up." Use only your first name and use your school email or the one that you used to join Youth Voices. #**Before you do anything else, YOU MUST CONFIRM IN YOUR EMAIL. Go to your email and copy a long address that starts with #::http://.... #::Paste this address in the address box of your browser, then enter. You should get a note saying that you have completed your registration. #'Zoom on the Entry Points Map. Place a marker.' #*Return to the Mapping Community in your elgg (Youth Voices or Personal Learning Space), and click on "Entry Points" again. Now you can zoom down to find the place that you wrote about earlier. #*'Helpful Hints' for zooming to your place on the map: #**Hit Reset. #**Uncheck all of the Categories in the Legend, then close the Legend box. This makes all of the current markers disappear. #**Double-click on anything that gets you closer to your place. Names of countries, states, cities, neighborhoods, parks... #**Keep double-clicking until you think you are at the place where you want to put your marker, then hit the Hybrid button. This should allow you to see the exact location. Now you can add a marker. #**Click the Legend tab again, then click Show All. #*Click Add marker, then click on the map at the location where you want your marker to appear. #::Need more help? View this tutorial: Adding Location by Click #'Here's what to put in your marker:' ##'On the Basic Tab:' ##*Title: Address or Place, by Your First Name ##*Category: Your School (For example: Stories from Eleanor Roosevelt High School) ##*Descripion: Paste your corrected freewrite here. ##'On the Address Tab:' ##*City: Shortest version (For example: New York) ##*State/Region: Abbreviated letters (For example: NY) ##*Country: Short or abbreviated letters (For example: US) ##'On the Details Tab:' ##*Show Directions: Uncheck ##*Website: http://YourElgg/YOUR USER NAME (For example: http://youthvoices.net/elgg/josem or http://personallearningspace.com/rachelb ##*That's all! Hit save. #'Now make a link from your profile back to your marker.' ##Zoom into your marker and select the map version that you want (Hybrid is nice.), then open your maker. ##Click the Share/Export tab, then click on "Link to this Marker". A highlighted link will appear in a box. Copy this link. ##Type this text, then make your title a link: ##:My Entry Point, "YOUR MARKER'S TITLE" ##:How to make your title a link: ##*Go to "Your Blog" and click "Post a New Entry." ##*Type the text into the box under Post body: ##*Highlight your title/address, and make it into a link. ##**Click on the link icon and paste the share link from the map into the pop-up box, in the URL section. ##**Also choose to Open link in a new window. ##Click on the Show HTML icon, and you should see code that looks something like this: ##:My Entry Point: ##:>Harlem YMCA ##Copy this code. (If there are any codes, delete these before you copy the code.) ##Paste this code into the "Brief Description" box in "Your Profile". Choose "Public" for the "Access Restriction" here. ##Go to the bottom of the page, and Save Profile. Examples Entry Points *First Entry Points *Here's another possiblility: Find an article by your local press. In a marker, write a brief response to the article, and be sure to quote from the article. Also make a link to the article within your response. Here's an example from the Lower East Side in NYC that Paul Allison created: "From Jewish to Puerto Rican... to what?"